La Traviata

Gianandrea Noseda on the podium for the inauguration
Laurent Pelly directs for the first time in Italy

Teatro Regio, Wednesday 14 October 2009 at 8 pm

Inaugurating the Teatro Regio season on Wednesday 14 October will be a new staging of La traviata. The great masterpiece of Giuseppe Verdi’s creative genius will be conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. For the first time in Italy, Laurent Pelly – director of the Théâtre National de Toulouse – will be responsible for the stage direction and costumes, while sets are by Chantal Thomas and lighting by Duane Schuler. Featured in Verdi’s opera will be Elena Mosuc and Carlos Álvarez, for the first time on stage in Torino, and Francesco Meli, who has chosen the Teatro Regio for his debut in the role of Alfredo. The Chorus Master is Roberto Gabbiani.

The new staging, realised by the Teatro Regio in co-production with the Santa Fe Opera Festival, proposes – eight years after the last production in Torino – one of the most emblematic titles of the great repertoire, which has never failed to stir audiences, and which the Teatro Regio will take on tour – together with La bohème – to Japan in July 2010.

The Gruppo Fondiaria Sai will sponsor, for the sixth consecutive year, the inaugural evening, demonstrating – even in a period of great economic difficulty – its willingness to continue to invest in culture and to strengthen its ties with the Teatro Regio and its city.

Composed by Giuseppe Verdi on a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils, La traviata was first staged in 1853 at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice where it was badly received. Performed again in Venice a year later, it met instead with great success.

Set in mid-nineteenth-century Paris, the story revolves around the beautiful Violetta Valéry, Marie Duplessis in real life, a Parisian courtesan who died young and whom Dumas fils was in love with. Violetta is reduced to sacrificing her love and even her life to save the honour of her beloved Alfredo, after his father Giorgio Germont orders him to break off the relationship in the name of respectability of the family. The solitude of the protagonist and her tragedy, the eternal conflict between destiny and desire, love and redemption, are the main themes in one of the world’s most popular stories.

The conducting and staging – say Maestro Noseda and director Pelly – emerge as a return to the origins of the opera. Gianandrea Noseda states: «keeping in mind all of the comparisons the production inevitably lays itself open to, the opera should be dealt with in such a way as to rid it of the weight of interpretive tradition, viewing it with a curious and intelligent eye». Noseda continues: «the production is sober without being minimalist, elegant without being excessive, charged with a sensuality not always displayed … it will be a vivid and concrete interpretation, marked by certain simple elements, symbols and references that little by little take on different forms, as though reflecting the points of view of the three main characters». Laurent Pelly adds: «the staging is given – for the entire length of the opera – the difficult role of semiotic generator: thus a stage can comprise numerous stages, becoming a country field in the only happy moment of the opera or a ballroom where the courtesans appear, but also the home of the dying Violetta or the cemetery of Montmartre. The same sobriety is to be found in the costumes, inspired by the 1800s but which could also be worn today».

For the first time in Torino, the Rumanian singer Elena Mosuc, one of the most expressive coloritura sopranos performing today, will be heard in the role of Violetta. With her, the brilliant Francesco Meli, one of the most important Italian tenors of the new generation, as Alfredo, making his debut in the role after his acclaimed interpretation as Ernesto in Don Pasquale last season. In the part of Giorgio Germont, for the first time in Torino, is Carlos Álvarez, the Spanish baritone with a voice of noble, refined and lyric timbre. During the twelve performances, from 14 to 28 October, alternating in the principal roles will be Irina Lungu (Violetta), Andrea Carè (Alfredo) and Angelo Veccia (Germont).

On 14 October, La traviata will be broadcast live on Radio 3; in addition, the programme Loggione on Canale 5 will dedicate an episode to this new production of the opera.

La traviata will be presented to the public by Angelo Foletto in Incontro con l’Opera, to take place at the Piccolo Regio Puccini on Wednesday 7 October at 5.30 pm.